Sanaa Farooqi

SAE Institute Glasgow “How do plot twists affect the success of a movie, TV show or video game?” Sanaa Farooqi Student No.: 96292 18T3_CMN4200_CMN4200.1_96292_Farooqi Date of Submission: 30/11/18 2,275 Words I hereby declare that this is my own work,and does not use any materials other than cited sources and tools. All explanations that I copied directly or in essence are marked as such. This work has not been previously submitted. ………………………………………. 30/11/18, Glasgow, Sanaa Farooqi 1 CONTENTS Intro - What’s a Twist? 3 Trope Subversion 3 Murder Mystery and Red Herrings 7 Conclusion 7 REFERENCES 8 BIBLIOGRAPHY 8 APPENDICES 9 2 Intro - What’s a Twist? A plot twist is, to put it in its simplest form, an extreme change in a piece of media’s narrative or outcome. (Singleton, Conrad and Healy, 2000). This is reserved for fictional works - one can’t exactly rewrite real events to make them more shocking. Plot twists are usually used to subvert people’s expectations of a piece of media, or can turn a piece of media on its head, making it much more than initially meets the eye. These can be found in any and all media that tells a story, even in music. However, for this paper, the focus will be on movies, TV shows, and videogames. There are a multitude of twists that are found. Feeding the player or viewer irrelevant information to cause them to draw incorrect conclusions of a story, also commonly known as a red herring. Some stories may withhold a vital piece of information from the viewer, until a specific point of the movie, and once this is revealed, the perception of the media piece can change radically on repeated viewings or playthroughs. An example of this can be found in The Sixth Sense (1999). Other stories take a risk, and completely subvert the genre that they present themselves as. I will be elaborating on two examples of these in my paper. The term can also be known as “Bait-and-Switch”, where viewers or players are lured into a piece of media for what it is on the surface, and then it is sooner or later switched for another genre. Trope Subversion People take the risk of subverting people’s expectations for a number of reasons. It can keep people engaged in the storyline, and keep the concepts fresh in a viewer or player’s mind. Some media takes this to the extremes, completely shifting its tone later down the line, thus risking losing a large amount of its viewership if executed poorly. One video game which risked such a twist was Doki Doki Literature Club (Team Salvato, 2017). The game was released on Steam’s online game platform for free in September 2017. It played as a traditional Visual Novel type video game. For the uninformed, a Visual Novel is a genre of game which is text-driven, using additional assets such as images of characters (typically in an anime style) and 3 detailed backgrounds to tell their stories.The stories tend to have branching narratives, depending on choices the player makes at key moment in the game. (Cavallaro, 2010) A common subgenre of the Visual Novel is the Dating Simulator. Doki Doki Literature Club placed itself onto store shelves, marketing itself as one of these Dating Simulators, presenting players with cute anime-styled girls and the choice to romance any they choose. The incentive of a free game had the opportunity to bring in even more than those who normally played Visual Novels. Fig 3. The main cast of the game. From left to right: Sayori, Yuri, Monika and Natsuki. (Team Salvato, 2017) The game is approximately 4 hours long (howlongtobeat.com, 2018). However, it uses the majority of its time, approximately half a playthrough on the part of the game known as Act 1. This part consistently plays out as a traditional visual novel, with options to hang out with whichever girl the player prefers, and grow a bond with them. The first twist in this game, comes from the end of the first act, where the main character’s childhood friend, Sayori, is revealed to have been suffering from crippling depression. Even where the usual Power of Love trope would pull through and save her from this, it simply doesn’t. Dan Salvato, the writer of the game stated in a Reddit AMA: “I have used real-life experiences as the basis for Sayori's behavior.” (Slavato, 2017). Unfortunately, the gravity of the character’s situation spirals further, and soon she’s found hanging from the ceiling, dead. From here, the game takes a turn for the worse, which will be elaborated on later. The same downhill slope can be found not just in video games, but in television too. 4 School-Live! (Studio Lerche, 2015) was an anime that provided a similar bait-and-switch. The anime contained 12 episodes to tell its story, which, is approximately gives the viewer about 4 hours to view the story that occurs. [Appendix A]. The anime revolves around a group of high school girls partaking in a “School Living Club” where they live in school. As the show opens, the viewer is greeted to an upbeat song, with colourful visuals, setting a cheery tone for the show. We are treated to the life for one of the main characters, Yuki, in her happy, upbeat world where she hangs around with her fellow classmates, and pet dog. As the episode progresses, we watch the escapades of Yuki chasing down her dog. Finally, as the episode draws to its final minutes, we view the world through another character’s viewpoint, and finally, the true nature of the show is revealed. The world isn’t happy-go-lucky, and instead, this is a story of survivors in a zombie apocalypse. The view that had been seen throughout the episode was a delusion of the main character’s. Fig. 1 - First two minutes of episode 1 (Studio Lerche, 2015) Fig. 2 - Final two minutes of episode 1 (Studio Lerche, 2015) 5 As seen here, in the above two figures, the mood of the show takes a very quick turn for the worst. The mood of fig. 2 represents how School-Live! plays out from that point of the episode until the end of the series. Setting a major twist so early may be considered ‘playing it safe’. As the twist in the series is revealed so soon, it means that those who have felt betrayed by the cutesy style of the anime can stop watching, knowing the show’s true colours, without being too invested. This strongly contrasts Doki Doki Literature Club’s premise. The game relies on you becoming comfortable and well-acquainted with the game world, before subverting the traditional Dating Simulator tropes one anticipates. It plays upon the bond it tries to form between the player and its characters, and once it does so, it breaks down the safeguard these games usually have, bringing in very real and serious topics, before putting the player on edge through sudden sounds and abnormal movements in the game. Word of the game’s sudden downward spiral spread fast, and thanks to the fact the software was free, Doki Doki Literature Club culminated over 3 million downloads, as stated in a Tweet by Team Salvato. (Twitter.com, 2018) The reasons for making the game free, as stated by Dan Salvato, “Two reasons. One because I knew it would attract the attention of a lot of people who would never pay a cent for an anime romance game. Two, because I felt that it would be wrong to sell a game that is simply not what is being advertised.” (Salvato. 2017). Despite the game being available for free, Team Salvato had also established ways for players to support the game, and thus the team were able to be rewarded for their efforts through other means, such as purchasing the game’s soundtrack. As Salvato states in a Reddit AMA, video games provide the user with something that film and TV cannot - direct input on a situation. “I wanted to help demonstrate the capabilities of interactive fiction, providing some kind of experiences that only a video game could provide.” (Salvato, 2017). Even when a format of video game such as a Visual Novel provides less input than traditional games, they can move at a player’s own pace, and react to a player’s input. Players can project themselves onto their character, which immerses them into the game world. When a player is making their own choices, it becomes easier to project, in comparison to trying to identify with a character in a film, who may do things that one may end up objecting to in the end. School-Live!, being an anime, also had the problem of being aired weekly, meaning that viewers had to wait for each episode, and if made to keep waiting, the interest in the series pre-twist may have died down. However, moving straight to the punch served it well.Iits online premiere on Nico Nico Douga culminated over three million views, and with the saturation of anime growing steadily [App. B], it was important to leave an impact with viewers immediately, as to not be overshadowed by other weekly shows at the time. Though the two series had similar, dark twists, the position of the twist was placed in a way that would give them more impact in their respective industries. And as shown, both had proven to be successful.

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